


In Preparation for War

by evilhippo



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilhippo/pseuds/evilhippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory Williams doesn't go looking for trouble, until the world leaves him no choice.  (Pre-"A Good Man Goes to War")</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Preparation for War

In all his years, Rory Williams has never gone looking for trouble. He's played by the rules. He checks before crossing the road (even in dusty, quiet Leadworth). He washes his hands before eating and he waits to go swimming afterwards.

Rory doesn't go looking for trouble, but he has waited for it, in the form of one Amelia Pond. Some said she was nothing but, but to Rory she's worth it.

Even when he thought he'd finished with waiting, he volunteered for two thousand years more of it just to make sure. He is the poster boy for “good things come to those who wait.”

Two thousand years of human history, in and out of countless wars, but never once had he taken up a position other than defence. He's been to war, but war has always come to him first. He's taken orders when he had to, but when left to own decisions he has waited and built up defences to push back those who came against him. It's a matter of placement. His patience let him see what was ahead and to prepare for it. He was never the kind of hero who was brash, or bold. He didn't need to be. He had Amy, and she didn't need saving—not from the world, nor the world from her. There was always Amy and then the world, separate, with him in between to watch out where she couldn't or wouldn't. That was simple.

But then there was Amy and time and space, and the Doctor, which was not simple. The Doctor had been fiction, and then he wasn't. Time and space had been linear and predictable, and then it wasn't. It wasn't just Amy and the world; it was Amy and her world, and the world. The walls and barriers didn't work how he planned, and he was never quite sure who he was protecting from whom. It took time (and space, and the Doctor), but Rory learned how not to put himself in between. How to be a part of a whole instead.

So when the world suddenly puts itself between Rory and Amy (and their world: time and space, and the Doctor), waiting isn't an option anymore. When the Doctor points him toward the far rooms of the TARDIS and warns him in a steely, distant tone to “Get ready,” he does.

 

And yet, as he stands in the cluttered hold of the TARDIS wardrobe, he hesitates. There is something altogether unfamiliar about what he knows he's about to do. But he has no patience for those who would take someone away from him. Who would replace her with something so very close to her, but so very much not.

And here he stops himself, because he remembers when the world had done the same to her, and how, in those half-hazy/half-remembered moments an entire universe ago, she had seen him for who he was despite the artificial body he'd found himself in. The parallel makes him wince. It's not a wound, but it's still tender. He tries to picture himself in her shoes all that time ago, relief and betrayal and forgiveness all at once, but every time he sees her image dissolved away again instead.

She was his anchor. She found him and brought him back to her world. Their world. Without her, he feels the fire rise in his stomach and his hand itches for a weapon. The feeling is uncomfortable, like it doesn't quite fit him, but he rides its coattails because he needs her there just as much, maybe more, than she needs him, and now...

...Now he knows she's pulling him back to her again. The thought comes with an exhale of relief. The chaos of being adrift in a vengeful sea with the Doctor, mad yet steady at the helm, is a strange comfort. He knows that no matter what, he's going to make it back to the one who will steady him. He touches gingerly at the memories he's kept locked away, feeling for those moments with Amy at his back and the world at his front, when he knew all he needed was patience.

He walks away from the TARDIS wardrobe and makes his way to their bedroom instead, and pulls the Roman armour from the closet. Its weight on his shoulders settles the memories set loose in his mind. The world and its defences stand between Rory Williams and his Amy, but Rory knows defences. And he can take them down.


End file.
